Out of Control (Kelly book)
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Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (ISBN 978-0201483406) is a 1992 book by Kevin Kelly. Major themes in Out of Control are cybernetics, emergence, self-organization, complex systems, negentropy and chaos theory and it can be seen as a work of techno-utopianism.[citation needed]
Summary
[edit]The central theme of the book is that several fields of contemporary science and philosophy point in the same direction: intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure but much more like a bee-hive of small simple components.[1] Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organizations, intelligent computers as well as to the human brain.
Reception
[edit]The book was not widely reviewed when first released in 1992, but got visibly reviewed and extensively cited during the next several years.[2] Reviews often discussed Kelly's hive-mind analogy as a metaphor for the New Economy.[3]
Reviewers have called this book a "mind-expanding exploration" (Publishers Weekly)[4] and "the best of an important new genre" (Forbes ASAP).[citation needed]
Critics of the book have contended that its position leaves us without a critical approach to politics and social power.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ Mitchell, Melanie (October 1995). "Mystifying the Net". Technology Review. 98 (7): 74. ProQuest 195337887.
- ^ Turner, Fred (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 285.
- ^ Turner, Fred (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 204.
- ^ Stuttaford, Genevieve (June 6, 1994). "Nonfiction -- Out of Control: The Rise of NeoBiological Civilization by Kevin Kelly". Publishers Weekly. 241 (23): 53. ProQuest 196996078.
- ^ Best, Steven; Douglas Kellner (1999-01-06). "Kevin Kelly's Complexity Theory The Politics and Ideology of Self-Organizing Systems". Organization & Environment. 12 (2): 141–162. doi:10.1177/1086026699122001. S2CID 144781438.
Further reading
[edit]- The book's homepage (includes the complete book online)
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